Pilgrim's Weeds

The costume of a pilgrim was thus called. It may be described as follows: In the first place, he wore a sclavina, or long Sown, made of the darkest colors and the coarsest materials, bound by a leathern girdle, as an emblem of his humility and an evidence of his poverty; a bourdon, or staff, in the form of a long walking stick, with two knobs at the top, supported his weary steps; the rosary and cross, suspended from his neck, denoted the religious character he had assumed; a scrip, or bag, held his scanty supply of provisions; a pair of sandals on his feet, and a coarse round hat turned before, in the front of which was fastened a scallop shell, completed the rude toilet of the pilgrim of the Middle Ages. Spenser's description, in the Fairic Queen (Book I, chapter vi, stanza 35), of a pilgrim's weeds, does not much differ from this:

A silly man in simple weeds forewarn And soiled with dust of the long dried way; His sandals were vtith toilsome travel torne, And face all tann'd with scorching sunny ray; As he had traveled many a summers day, Through boiling sands of Araby and Inde; And in his hand a Jacob's staff to stay His weary limbs upon; and eke behind His scrip did hang, in which his needments he did bind.